


a man no longer what he was (nor yet the thing he'd planned)

by ash818



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Action & Romance, Big Brother Oliver, Drabble Collection, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Family Feels, Future Fic, Gen, Married Couple, Married Sex, Naked Cuddling, Nightmares, One Shot, Pining, Post-Series, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Series, Sibling Love, Slow Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-01-19 10:08:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 9,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1465477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ash818/pseuds/ash818
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ollie Queen was lost at sea, and Oliver came back. Moment to moment, he's figuring out who that is.</p><p>My collection of one-shots and shortfic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Hundred and Twelve

The island didn’t teach Oliver to jump a motorcycle over a flight of stairs. Two wrecked Yamahas and a Ducati taught Ollie that. No one – not his parents, not law enforcement, not even Thea frightened and crying when he put himself in the hospital – could teach him to stop.

But he never pulled that crap with Laurel riding behind him. “Can we go fast?” she’d say, eyes shining, and he’d take her for a smooth cruise at seventy on a wide open highway. Maybe sometimes he revved the engine just to hear her laugh with uncomplicated pleasure. He was reckless with her heart, but never her safety.

“Is that speedometer accurate?” Felicity asks. Despite the cold wind battering them both, he can hear her clearly over the helmet intercom.

“Yes,” Oliver snaps, as glaring red taillights streak past and the lane markers blur into a stream of white. It’s midnight – what are all these people doing on the interstate? Why are they camping out in the left lane? Shouldn’t they be clearing a path for the blue lights and sirens?

“Ok, then.” Felicity’s arms tighten around his waist. “Carry on.”

He and Laurel never led the police on a high-speed chase. Nor did they ever break into a brothel to steal valuable information on the mob at the exact same time the police raided the place.

“They’re falling behind,” Diggle says over the comm. “I think you can lose them at the next exit.”

There are five extremely inconvenient SUVs in Oliver’s way. “Felicity, what did I tell you earlier?”

“No sudden movements, feet on the pegs, move with you.”

“That’s right. Move with me.” He weaves an S-pattern through the traffic, then swerves across four lanes to the exit ramp. Her weight follows his with total trust, leaning deep into the curves. They straighten up and out. There’s not nearly enough off-ramp. “Braking!” he warns Felicity. The sudden deceleration still slams her against his back at several times her actual weight, smacking their helmets together. He’s braced for it, but it nearly destabilizes the bike.

“Oh god oh god oh god,” she murmurs all the way down the ramp, until she starts experiencing gravity normally again.

“They blew right past the exit,” Dig says. “You’re in the clear.”

They’re in the warehouse district near the wharfs, an area composed of one half trendy clubs and one half abandoned wrecks. There will be very few sober witnesses to remember that a guy in green leathers rode through here two-up with a petite blonde.

“You’ve got the thumb drive?” Dig double-checks.

“Still in my bra,” Felicity confirms.

Oliver doesn’t mean to make a disapproving noise. It just happens.

“What?” she demands. “You told me to put it somewhere I absolutely could not lose it.”

“It’ll be a twenty minute ride home if we stay off the highways,” is all he replies.

“John, thanks for working mission control on this one,” Felicity says.

“Cast comes off tomorrow,” Dig says, and it’s obvious he can barely wait. “Then the monitors are all yours again. See you when you get here.” He clicks off.

Oliver takes the next red light as an opportunity to put his feet down and check on Felicity. He can feel her shaking. Adrenaline’s nice when you’re flying on it, but the landing can be a little bumpy. Or maybe the midnight chill is getting to her. He rests a hand on her knee, right next to his hip. “You ok?”

“That was my first motorcycle ride,” she says through shivers. For the first time in fifteen minutes, she releases her hold on his waist, and she lays her hand over his. “I didn’t tip us over. We didn’t die. I think my insides turned to jelly, but in the fun, rollercoaster kind of way, you know?”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Her hands are bare, he realizes. He has an idea, thinks better of it, then thinks better of that. Why shouldn’t he offer? “I have pockets, if your hands are cold.”

He can’t see her, but he can hear the smile in her voice. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

He did, actually. Once there was a hole in one pocket, and within five minutes Kristen had him pulling over and begging for mercy. Her hands had not been cold at all. He sighs. “You can wear my gloves, if you prefer.”

The light turns green. She slides her hands into his jacket pockets, and she keeps them respectably high against his belly. “Thank you.”

They swing off through the night, the R1200GS purring at this easy pace. Dark storefronts and neon bar signs glide by, and the wind off the lake makes the neighborhood seem to breathe.

“Hey,” Felicity murmurs. “We don’t have to go straight home, do we?”

He lets them coast. “Why?” She shifts behind him, and he compensates for the wobble. “Hey, I said no sudden movements.”

“Sorry. But I like the bike, and I don’t really want the ride to end yet, and we’re close to West End anyway. There’s this jetty out on the water. Do you know it?”

He does. It’s across the harbor from Starling Yacht Club, to which his family has belonged since his great great grandfather became one of the founding members in 1874. He spent summers there racing Lasers and 420s on the lake. After sunset, you could take a girl out to the jetty and… park. Maybe she was your girlfriend, and maybe she wasn’t. Maybe you haven’t changed as much as you think.

“I don’t mean let’s go make out,” Felicity says quickly.

“We should get back and find out exactly what’s on that data stick.”

“We will. But it’s pretty out there, Oliver. Especially on a night like this.”

It’s gorgeous.

They park the bike and step from rock to rock to watch the whitecaps dash themselves to pieces on the scree. In the moonless dark, the windows of SYC glow across the harbor, and the black expanse of the lake stretches away so far that they can find no horizon. Oliver stands directly upwind of Felicity, shoulders squared against thirty knots of cold.

She smiles up at him with uncomplicated pleasure, her hair loose and tangling in the wind. “I can’t believe we just went a hundred and twelve miles an hour.”

“That’s never happening again, if I can help it,” he says. He’s been reckless with her safety. Every time she looks up at him wearing this particular smile, all he can think is how badly he’ll hurt her if she gives him her heart too.

She laughs. “We can take our time getting home.”


	2. Six Speed

“Thea?”

“Hmm?”

“Who taught you to drive?”

Bleary-eyed, she sits up straight, frowning at Oliver in the pale blue glow given off by a muted infomercial. “What?”

It’s two in the morning, and he’s beyond exhausted. Their OnDemand movie was over an hour ago, but he can’t go to sleep. He thinks of odd things at this time of night, mostly because the alternative is thinking of worse ones.

When Thea was twelve, she used to beg him to drive her to school. With her in the car, Oliver stopped for red lights and stayed within twenty miles per hour of the speed limit. Even so, his rosso corsa F430 felt nimble and daring compared to the town car. Speedy wanted to zip along low to the ground and whip around corners. Oliver shifted smoothly between gears, and she kept up a steady stream of chatter. “Ollie, the speedometer goes up to 220. Can we try it? Please? Pretty please? Why the hell not? You’re not Dad, you can’t tell me to watch my mouth. Ok, ok, fine. Geez.”

One morning after an all-night party, running solely on Red Bull, Oliver discovered a godawful noise emanating from his speakers. “Thea. Is that Jordin Sparks?”

“Maybe.”

“As soon as you can reach the pedals,” he grumbled, “you’re driving yourself to school.”

“In this car?” Thea said hopefully.

“Ha. You’re funny.”

She rolled her eyes. “Jerk.”

“Brat.” He stuck his tongue out at her, because with his little sister he was not above a cheap laugh. The moment he had her smiling again, he yanked her iPod out of the dock and refused to give it back.

One night he found her in the garage, perched on the edge of his driver’s seat with her gangly legs stretched out. If she pointed her toes, she could just barely tap the gas and brake.

“I just wanted to see,” she said defensively.

“Give it another couple years,” he said, ruffling her hair. “I know a place we can take Mom’s car, and I’ll teach you.”

A month later he was gone.

The empty popcorn bowl is wedged between the sofa cushions. He digs it out and sets it on the coffee table. “I promised I would, remember?”

Thea frowns at him. “That better not be guilt I’m hearing.”

“No,” he says, and it’s ninety-nine percent true. “I just wondered.”

She closes her eyes, presses her fingers to the bridge of her nose, and shakes her head. “Umm. Franklin.”

“Who?”

“Our driver at the time. Franklin Hughes. You never met him.”

Oliver was hoping she would say Mom had taught her, or even Walter. But Franklin the complete stranger seems to have done a half-decent job, so he keeps those thoughts to himself. “Did he teach you to drive stick?”

“Nobody drives stick, Ollie.”

“The F430’s a manual.” He allows the appropriate dramatic pause before he says, “You sure you don’t want to learn?”

Thea sits up straight on the sofa.

That weekend, he drives her out to the giant, empty commuter lot at SCU, and he swaps places with her. “Adjust your seat. You need to be able to press the clutch all the way down.”

“Thank you, Ollie,” she says archly, as the seat buzzes forward. “That would never have occurred to me.”

He gives her a look. “I see you plan to make this fun for both of us.”

The first time she stalls out, they both jerk forward, and Oliver’s seat belt catches him right on the bruised ribs from last night’s skirmish. He can’t help the grunt of pain, which she takes for disapproval.

“I’m sorry. I’ve never done this before, okay?”

“It’s fine,” he manages to say, unbuckling and trying to breathe carefully. “You’re fine.” He’ll just have to brace himself against the glove compartment.

The sixth time she stalls out, she nearly gives them both whiplash. She smacks the steering wheel in frustration. “Why do I suck at this?”

“You don’t suck,” Oliver says. “No one does this perfectly their first time out. Ease the clutch off gently, don’t pop it like that. Try again.”

The eleventh time she kills the engine, he starts laughing.

“’S not funny,” she sulks.

He can’t stop. She’s got an angry crease between her eyebrows, her lower lip is distinctly pouty, and all in all she looks exactly like the gangly kid who used to ride shotgun and screw with his music. That kid grew up, and he missed it. But here they are jerking around a parking lot in this ridiculous, flashy, overpowered car. Here he is, making good on his promise.

“Shut up,” Thea says, but a smile is tugging at the corners of her mouth.

He controls himself long enough to say, “You’ll get the hang of it. Come on, try again.”

"Yeah, twelfth time’s the charm."

She turns the engine over. Brake, clutch, ease, give it a little gas –

Too fast off the clutch again. The F430 lurches forward a few feet and kills.

Oliver bursts out laughing.

This time Thea laughs with him.


	3. Candy doesn't have to have a point.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That's why it's candy.

In the fifth grade, Thea fell madly, hopelessly in like with Jason Hunt, the class clown. She told a friend, who told a friend, who told his friend, and by Friday night they had agreed (through a chain of proxies that rivaled the webs of diplomacy at your average G8 summit) to meet at the movies.

It wasn’t a date, because a dozen other friends were there too. But they snuck into _When a Stranger Calls_ , and Jason took the seat next to her. In the third act, his hand found hers, and her stomach swooped. He didn’t let go until the lights came up, and Thea maybe shrieked and clutched at him more than necessary. She felt daring and vulnerable at once, and when Ollie picked her up in the F430, she couldn’t stop smiling.

“How was _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_? I hear it’s weird.”

She ignored him rather than lie, busying herself with arranging her purse at her feet and making sure the ticket stub was zipped safely in the pocket. This one was definitely going in her cigar box of mementos. “Oliver,” she said when she sat up. “How do you know if a boy likes you?”

He grinned at her as wide as the time she told Tommy his frosted hair looked stupid. “What’s his name?”

“Hypothetically,” she scoffed.

“Put your seat belt on,” he said absently, pulling away from the curb. “Does Hypothetically talk to you? Does he pay attention to you?”

She considered leaving the belt unbuckled, just to spite him for ordering her around. But it really wasn’t worth it. “Let’s say he does.”

“Then it’s a good bet he likes you.”

“Oh my god, Ollie.” For a twenty year old who’d already attended two different colleges, her brother could be kind of immature. “You know what I meant. Like-like.”

“Has he proposed?”

“What? No!”

“Then I have no idea.”

She grumbled down low in the seat. “I am never asking you anything ever again, you big jerk.”

Oliver worked the gear shift to swing them through a corner and roar up the Interstate entrance ramp. He cocked an eyebrow at her. “What do you think a guy would do, if he liked you?”

“I don’t know,” she muttered. “Hold my hand?”

It must have sounded more hopeful than she intended, because his expression softened, and an unfamiliar smile quirked just one side of his mouth. “Yeah, he’d better.”

Thea shook her head. “You are so weird.”

“If he pays attention to you, and he listens to you, and he treats you well, and he holds your hand,” Oliver said, eyes on his mirrors once more, “then he likes you.”

“Great. Thank you.” She rolled her eyes. “Question answered.”

The odd smile was gone. “And if he doesn’t do those things, he’s not for you.”

“Yeah, ok.”

“And if he makes you cry,” Oliver looked at her very seriously, and Mom would probably have fussed at him for taking his eyes off the road so long, “I will make him cry.”

She unbuckled her seatbelt.

“Hey, put that back on.”

“Calm down, Ollie. I will.”

But first she climbed up on her knees and leaned over to kiss his cheek.


	4. Hostile Work Environment

“You turned off my alarm.”

“Yes,” Felicity says on the other end of the line, patient and unrepentant. “You needed sleep.”

“It’s eleven o’clock. I’ve missed two meetings this morning – “

“Who manages your schedule, Oliver? You did not miss anything at all.”

“Fine,” he sighs. “But just so you know, I’m at Starbucks this very second, and I was planning to buy you your first pumpkin spice latte of the season, but now I don’t think you deserve – “

“Oliver.” The teasing is gone from her voice. “Did you arrange to meet with Isabel Rochev without telling me?”

“What? No.”

“She just stepped out of the elevator. I’ll call you back.”

Oliver buys a pumpkin spice latte.

Fifteen minutes later, he steps off the elevator and scans the executive suite for Isabel. There is no one there but Felicity, who sits oddly still in front of her computer. She barely looks up when he comes in, and she doesn’t immediately snatch up the fragrant, steaming cup he sets down in front of her. Her hands are fidgety in her lap.

“Felicity. What’s wrong?”

It takes her a couple of tries to get the words lined up properly. “Ms Rochev was just here.”

“What did she want?”

Oliver thought he’d heard every variation of Felicity’s sigh. Tired, annoyed, dreamy, curious, all of it. Cynicism, however, is new. “She just offered me money to leave you.”

It’s not the strangest thing he’s heard this month, but it’s definitely a contender for the week. “She did what?”

“To quit my job. Apparently I am a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen,” Felicity says with forced brightness. “It would really be better for everyone if I left gracefully now, before any further complications arise. The severance package would be quite generous.” She blows air through her teeth. “It’s nice to know I have options.”

Rumors were one thing. This is something else.

“I think she just called me a prostitute,” Felicity says, aiming a puzzled frown at her latte. “Is that what just happened?” She sighs a little deeper into her chair. “It was six figures. At least she thinks I’m one of those high-end prostitutes, like for governors and athletes.”

Once, after dropping three grand on a case, Oliver made the mistake of saying, “It’s only money” to Digg and Felicity. They both shook their heads like he was a child parroting an embarrassing line he’d heard on TV.

Yet it has not even occurred to Felicity to accept Isabel’s offer. Shame crawls over Oliver’s skin on little millipede legs, and his collar attempts to choke him. “I’m sorry I’ve put you in this position.”

“You haven’t put me in any positions,” she grumbles, and he can see on her face when she realizes how it sounds. “Ugh. Of course, there’s the irony, right? If we were doing the Kama Sutra page by page, at least this would make _even a little bit_ of sense. Not to mention she’s the one you actually – “

“I’ll talk to her,” Oliver says quietly. “Nothing like this will ever happen again.”

Felicity lifts a hand and bats that idea out of the air. “If you jump on your white horse and ride to defend my honor, it’ll only make things worse. Let me handle it, okay?”

He shifts his useless weight over his useless feet. “Can I do anything to help?”

Felicity finally curls a hand possessively around the latte. “You brought me pumpkin spice?”

Maybe this is not an appropriate moment to smile, but she’s giving him that thoughtful head tilt, as if she hasn’t decided whether she approves of him yet. “I brought you pumpkin spice.”

At last, he sees dimples. “Then you helped.”

The next time he sees Isabel Rochev, Oliver strategically hip-checks a breakfast buffet and douses her cream wool dress in coffee.

It’s petty, but it helps.


	5. Baby's breath

Laurel caught a stomach bug, and at the last minute Ollie found himself without a date to a friend’s wedding. He cocked his head at Thea, said, “You busy tonight?” and smiled when she practically exploded with excitement.

He introduced her to his friends as if she were a sophisticated peer. He slipped her champagne at the reception. He put her on his shoulders for the bouquet toss, which all the bridesmaids agreed was cheating, but which they also agreed was so adorable they’d let it slide. Thea missed by her fingertips, and the woman who caught it pulled a sprig of baby’s breath free and tucked it into Thea’s hair.

But what she remembers best is that he danced with her, pretty much all night, spinning and dipping and whirling her across the floor. Sometimes Tommy and the other groomsmen cut in, but mostly it was Oliver, song after song. Her cute, strappy shoes rubbed her heels raw, and she didn’t even care.

Before midnight, she was asleep on a loveseat in the foyer. Ollie carried her to a cab and tipped the driver extravagantly.

Years later, she found out that the moment she was gone, he hit the party like a hurricane and hooked up with the maid of honor. “I wish I’d had a cute kid sister to dance with,” Tommy said when he told her the story, drunk and morose on the fourth anniversary of Oliver’s disappearance. “Never seen so many women throw themselves at anyone.”

“You were both disgusting,” Thea said, though she didn’t have it in her to mind.

In fact, that wedding remains one of her favorite memories. To this day, baby’s breath reminds her of sitting tall on Oliver’s shoulders, reaching farther than she ever could alone.


	6. Blood Alcohol Content

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two times Oliver Queen got a DUI.

“I wasn’t that drunk!” Oliver said.

“You blew a .11,” Mom replied with icy patience.

Now was not the time to tell her about that night with the breathalyzer and the Costa Rican cacique, when his pledge class figured out how high they could blow and still lie on the floor without holding on. Let’s just say Oliver Queen metabolizes alcohol like a boss.

His BAC when he tried to beat the light was an unfortunate coincidence.

“Sandra needed a ride home. It wasn’t a big deal.”

His mother sighed. “What prevented you from calling a cab?”

He opened his mouth to answer. Closed it again. A pretty girl with dimples needed someone to take her home. He had a car, he could walk a straight line, and he liked her. Win-win all around. “That honestly didn’t occur to me.”

That was his first DUI.

His last is ten years later, with the Scarecrow’s serum coursing through his veins and Felicity bleeding in the passenger seat.

“Stay with me stay with me stay with me,” he chants, glaring at the road to force the flashing blue lights and streaking red taillights into coherence. He can ignore the nightmares swooping out of the shadows for another few blocks. Starling General isn’t far.

“’M cold,” Felicity murmurs, and that’s shock. She’s going into shock. He shakes his head hard, and he leans on the gas.

When they pull up to the emergency room eight moving violations later, the two police cars on their tail screech up right behind them. Felicity gets piled onto a stretcher and Oliver into a squad car.

 Later, when he’s out on bail and waiting for visiting hours to begin, he finds Detective Lance fidgeting at the other end of the waiting room.

“Why didn’t you pull over when you heard the sirens?” Lance asks him. “You know they would have taken her the rest of the way.”

His girl needed someone to take her to the hospital. He had a car, he could keep it between the lines, and he - well.

“That honestly didn’t occur to me.”


	7. Stand aside

"Oliver? Oliver!"

The spreading pool of blood beneath his head soaks into Felicity’s skirt, sticking it to her knees and shins. But she’s always heard that head wounds bleed out of proportion to the actual injury, and she knows from experience that the man has a skull thick as reinforced concrete. So what if his face is a terrifying shade of gray? He’ll be fine. He has to be.

A sword whispers out of its sheath. It gleams under the streetlamp, and the reflected light flashes across her face. “Stand aside,” the assassin says in a resonant, commanding voice that sounds like it belongs on a nineteenth century battlefield.

Felicity chambers a round in the Beretta. Dig would be proud that she didn’t pinch herself racking the slide this time. “No.”

Under the flamboyant mask - and seriously, these are the most conspicuous ninjas who have ever ninja’d - there might be a pitying smile. He takes a step forward.

Aim center of mass, just like Dig taught her. ”I will kill you if you touch him.”

"Your hands are trembling badly, and it is unlikely you will stop me with your first shot," the assassin says calmly. "That weapon is not a suitable size for you, and the recoil will disrupt your balance long enough for me to dispatch you."

Terror claws its way up the back of her throat. She swallows it back down.

"The League has no quarrel with you, Miss Smoak. You need not die with him," the assassin says with a note of gentleness in his beautiful baritone. "Stand aside, please."

Felicity is quite certain that, if it were her bleeding on the concrete, not wind nor fire nor God Himself could make Oliver stand aside. If this guy thinks she will do any less, he is dumber than his costume makes him look. “I said  _no_.” _  
_

The sword flashes.

She fires.


	8. Abigail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thea Queen talks to her nephew on the eve of her niece's birth.

“I’m bored,” the kid says for the sixth time, scuffing his shoe against the hospital’s linoleum floor. “When can we go home?”

Thea sighs, also for the sixth time. “The miracle of life is going on in the next room, ok? Rush a miracle maker, get rotten miracles.”

He shrugs. “I wanted a puppy, so it’s kind of a bust already.”

She sits up straight in her wheelchair, and in her best Dearden voice, she says, “Sit down, Jonny.”

He sits. He’s seven, not stupid.

“A long time ago, I was somebody’s baby sister. From the day I was born, he loved me, he looked out for me, and he tried to do what was best for me.” She pivots her chair to square up with her nephew. “Sometimes he screwed up.  Sometimes I was annoying and ungrateful.”

Jonny looks skeptical. She’s not exactly selling him on this big brother deal.

“Once, I even tried…” She still feels a prickle of shame on the back of her neck, after all this time. “I tried not being his sister. I tried as hard as I could.”

Jonny bites his lip to keep from making a smart remark. His eyes say it for him, glancing from her to the door Oliver most recently disappeared through. _How’d that work out for you?_

It’s hard to explain how they got here from there. She’s not sure herself, some days. She can’t tell a second grader that she was once remade, new and strange in a strange land. She can’t tell the kid that Oliver called her home from the darkness, and she wouldn’t come, and she wouldn’t come, and when he tried to come for her he got a sword through his lung for his trouble. She has never told anyone, not even Roy, exactly what Oliver said to her the night before he fought the Demon's Head in her place.

“He never gave up on being my brother,” is the best she can do. “I would’ve been lost, if it weren’t for him.”

“Oh,” Jonny says, and it’s clear that he’s not getting any of this. “Ok.”

Regroup. Rephrase. “That little girl is going to look up to you and love you like nobody else in the world,” Thea starts again. “You are going to be so important to her, you don’t even know.”

Jonny lets his feet swing. He glances at the door again.

Thea gives up. “This is kind of a big deal, is what I’m trying to say.”

He gives a one-shouldered shrug. “I know.”

“Way better than a puppy.”

“Ok,” he agrees dutifully.

Three hours later, Thea watches as Oliver puts a bundle of blankets in Jonny’s arms. There is a squashed nose in the blankets. There are blotchy, puffy cheeks.

Jonny stares.

After a little while, he smiles.


	9. she looks at him different

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based on spoilers for the premiere of season three and meta by thecatbastet.

“There are things I haven’t told you,” Oliver says haltingly over garlic bread. “About the time I was away.”

She nods. “I know.”

The puzzle pieces were always there. He obviously did not learn urban parkour in the wilderness, nor did the birds teach him to pilot a plane. The Bratva did not induct him as a captain via Skype call to Lian Yu, and Amanda Waller did not make his acquaintance at the beach. Of course Felicity put them together; he expected her to.

But, no, she does not _know_.

“I’d like to hear them, when you’re ready,” she says. “I mean, not ‘like to’ as in ‘enjoy,’ because I have a feeling these are not happy fun stories. But you can tell me, if you want to.”

The only way to get through this with her trust intact is to lay it all on the table. If he speaks in half-truths now, he’ll ruin this. “I don’t want to,” he says, a little more hoarsely than he’d like. “It’s selfish, but the way you look at me…”

She’s doing it now, without even her glasses to mute the effect. He wants so badly to live up to that look.

“I think that if I told you these things, you wouldn’t look at me that way anymore.”

She reaches across the table for his hand. “Well, then, you’re a dummy.”

Then the bomb goes off.

The universe flies into a million pieces, and when it reforms, it’s been put back together wrong. All wrong. He’s supposed to bleed on the med table, not her.

When she’s stable, he picks up the bow.

“Where are you going?” Dig says.

“They do not get away with this.”

Four men try to stop him getting to the one responsible. Four men’s deaths are announced on the nightly news. They were found with custom-made green arrows lodged in their throats.

When Oliver comes back to the foundry, blood spattered across his leathers, Felicity is sitting up on the med table. Her face is clean of blood, and she’s drowning in one of Dig’s shirts.

She looks at him different.

Dig’s arms are crossed, but it’s not condemnation, exactly. “I’ll give you two a minute.”

Oliver can hardly meet her eyes.

“I can’t be your exception,” she whispers, shivering under the gray blanket. “Oliver, I can’t.”

“I killed people for Waller in Hong Kong,” he grits out. “Not bad people, just… people.  I snapped a man’s neck to be inducted into the Bratva. I killed people for seeing things I couldn’t afford for them to have seen.”

She nods, eyes filling with tears. “You’re not that man anymore.”

“Tonight I was.” And the hell of it is, he’s not even sorry. If she’s bleeding on a table, he’ll be whoever he has to be. Honestly he’s terrified by the things he can imagine himself doing in her name, by the echo of his own self-righteous lecture to Slade.

“The new guy – the one I’m in love with – he doesn’t pick up that bow to punish the guilty. He does it to protect the innocent.”

He closes his eyes. Back in May she risked her life to keep his hands clean. He’s not sorry, but he is ashamed.

On her next blink, one tear spills over and runs down her cheek. “Oliver?”

He looks at her split lip, and then he meets her eyes. “You know I meant what I said that night.”

“Yeah.” She smiles, fragile and watery. “I kind of thought you might have.”

He’s a coward if he doesn’t say it now. “I love you.”

Her breath leaves her in a rush – half delighted laughter, half resigned sob.

“But I don’t know that I’ll ever be the man you think I am.” Right this second, if he closes the distance and holds her the way he wants to, someone else’s blood will stain her shirt. He’s not usually given to metaphor, but this one hits him hard. “Maybe it’s better if we don’t do this.”

Every time he expects shock, all he gets is another patient nod. Two more tears slip down. “Maybe it’s better.”

The night ends almost exactly the way he envisioned while he was re-tying his tie for the third time this afternoon. He drives Felicity home, opens the car door for her, and walks her up the steps of her town house.

He doesn’t kiss her on her doorstep.


	10. Bad Choiceville

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smartmouthing his mother was not Jonny Queen's finest moment.

"We are not done talking about this,” Felicity says, raising a stern finger at her son.

Jonathan nods, looking a bit shellshocked, and sways against the kitchen island. His legs haven’t supported his weight properly since Oliver lifted his feet off the floor and held him nose to nose.

She takes a last look at him, and she follows her husband upstairs. The moment she closes the bedroom door behind her, she rounds on him.

“Oliver, you scared the hell out of him.”

“Good,” he says with his back to her, yanking off his tie in front of the mirror. “We’ll see if he’s ever that disrespectful again.”

“That was the Arrow’s voice I just heard down there,” she hisses, crossing the room to meet his eyes in the mirror. “You know, the voice people used to hear right before suffering deep tissue puncture wounds? You used it on our  _son_.” She gestures behind her, to where she left Jonny still white and shaken. “I think he really believed for a second that you were going to hurt him.”

Oliver tosses the wadded-up tie across the room, and he starts on his shirt buttons. “And it’s the only thing either of us has tried that’s gotten his attention.”

Her hands ball into fists at her sides. “Is that how you want to relate to him?” she demands. “Fear?”

“Not particularly.” A button pops off his shirt and bounces off the mirror. “But I am not interested in a calm, rational discussion with a fourteen year old who’s just called you a bitch.”

“It’s a word, Oliver.” The shock and hurt still twinge in her gut –  _what did my baby boy just call me?_  – but it has no power to do her permanent damage. “You got in his face and physically intimidated him over a word.”

He spins to face her. “No one ever drew a line for me!”

She presses her lips together, and she waits.

“I went looking for the limit, like he’s doing now.” Oliver breathes in fast and sharp through his nose. “What if I skip this class? Tell this lie? What if I wreck this car, trash this hotel room? How far can I go before they have to take me seriously?”

There was no limit, Felicity knows. He could make no mess that his parents would not clean up. He could hurt no one that they would not pay off. They could die for him, eyes open and unflinching, but they could not tell him no when he needed it.

“He does not call you that,” Oliver says. “That’s the line.”

It’s true that lectures, revoked privileges, calm discussions, and appeals to his better nature have done absolutely nothing to turn around the Jonny train chugging resolutely toward Bad Choiceville. They haven’t even slowed him down. Oliver grabbing him under the arms and dangling him in midair is the first thing that has rattled the kid’s studied nonchalance.

But it’s not like Oliver made a conscious, tactical decision to deal with bad behavior. He heard the word “bitch” leave Jonny’s mouth, and he reacted in under a second.  _You do not speak to my wife that way._

 “Find some other way to draw the line,” Felicity says in a low and very definite tone. “I know you would die before you hurt Jon or Abby. But if you ever, ever make either of them think that you _might_ , ever again…” She doesn’t know what she’ll do. She just fists a hand in his shirt, and she hopes he understands.

He holds her gaze, and the anger drains from his face. Slowly, he nods. His hands run up her arms, and his eyes are such a warm blue that they’re hard to reconcile with the flint-grey glare of five minutes ago. “You’re right,” he whispers. “Some other way.”

Felicity leans her forehead against his chest. “He did kind of hurt my feelings, though.”

Oliver wraps her up in his arms. “I know.”

“And, oh joy, he’s got underage consumption of alcohol on his record now.” She draws in a shaky breath. “What are we going to do with him?”

Oliver kisses the top of her head. “Sell him.”

She sighs. “It’s a bear market for mouthy teenagers, babe.”

They discover not long after that Jonny is much more afraid of his mother crying than he ever was of his father yelling.

It’s another way, and it works like gangbusters.


	11. I think to myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver and Felicity dance at the Diggles' wedding.

Oliver has never seen Felicity drunk before. 

He’s also never seen her party with Dig and Lyla’s Army buddies.

"It’s a wedding, ma’am," says Gunny Wynne, bringing Felicity her third mojito. "I want to see some serious celebration here."

She raises the glass to him. “You haven’t even seen me do the electric slide yet.”

"You keep an eye on that dirty old man," Sgt. Colbert advises her. "He knows he doesn’t start looking prettier until the fourth drink."

Oliver is keeping two eyes on all of them. There’s no need for it; he doesn’t for a moment believe that Dig or Lyla would invite actual creeps anywhere near Felicity or their other guests. Nor does he have any claim on her whatsoever. He gave that up the night she lay bloody on the med table and he killed four men to find the one responsible. “I can’t be your exception,” she said, hand curled at the neckline of the red dress that stopped his heart when he picked her up for dinner. “Maybe it’s better if we don’t do this.”

He has not touched her since.

But he watches. On the dance floor, men in dress greens keep cutting in for a turn with her, and she seems to be having the time of her life getting spun and dipped. Her summery pink dress swirls around her knees, and a few curls escape her hairstyle to wisp at her temples and the nape of her neck. She’s laughing, cheeks pink with the alcohol and the exertion. It’s not the kind of thing Oliver can ignore.

"Drink up," Lyla says, having a seat next to him at the candlelit table and sliding a shot of bourbon his way. "You look like you need it."

He rarely drinks since the island, but tonight he shrugs. “Bride’s orders.”

Lyla watches him knock it back, then she follows his gaze to the dance floor, where Dig and Felicity are rocking out to the last verse of “Brown Eyed Girl.”

"Our first wedding was at a courthouse," Lyla says, smiling at her ex-ex-husband. "We skipped the big party entirely. Didn’t seem important in the middle of… everything else. But this is nice, getting everyone together. It’s nice to see them having a good time."

The music fades out, and Felicity throws her arms around Dig for a drunk, giggly hug. Oliver smiles. “Yes, it is.”

"You know," Lyla says wryly, "I bet she’d get a real kick out of dancing with you too."

That is the worst idea he’s heard since someone yelled for Dig to take off Lyla’s garter with his teeth. Oliver clears his throat. “I don’t dance.”

"It would make her really happy."

Oliver gives her a look.

She gives it right back to him. “I’m serious. Go ask her and see how big she smiles.” She jerks her chin toward the dance floor.

The moment he stands up, resigned to his fate, the percussion goes soft. The lead singer starts to croon, “I see trees of green, red roses too. I see them bloom for me and you.”

Oliver glares at the band, at the empty shot glass, and then at Lyla. He considers sitting back down.

"Bride’s orders," Lyla says pleasantly.

Oliver arrives at Felicity’s side at the exact same moment that Sgt. Colbert shows up with his hand outstretched. Oliver fully intends to bow out gracefully, because this is a perfect excuse to defy the bossy bride, but somehow he finds himself casting an irritable glance at Colbert. The man bursts out laughing.

"Save one for me later, sweetheart," he tells Felicity, patting her arm, and he reroutes for the bar.

Felicity turns to Oliver curiously. “Everything okay?”

It would be polite to ask for a dance, out loud and in actual words. Instead he puts a hand behind her left shoulder blade and scoops her toward him. Her arms come up around his neck immediately

"Oh, is that what you wanted?" She grins just as wide as Lyla said she would, all wine-flushed cheeks and glittering, slightly unfocused eyes. For a moment, he doesn’t breathe. He’s been trying to claw his way out of love with this woman for months, hasn’t he? To slow dance with her would be some gold-plated stupid.

But he’s done much stupider things for much worse reasons than making Felicity smile.

If they’re going to do this, they’re going to do it right. Oliver repositions her left hand to just above his elbow, and he holds out his free hand for hers. She tries to lace her fingers through his, and he turns his palm up to adjust her grip. Her fingers are small and soft and a little bit cold against his calluses. “Like this,” he says softly, using the frame they’ve created to move her smoothly a few steps and sweep her around him. At first he has to do a little of what his mother used to call “shouting”: strong pressure on her hand and back to announce, _I want you to move_ this _way_.

Then she falls into rhythm with him, and she follows a quiet murmur of a lead as if they have been doing this for years. Step and sway, slow turn to the right. The bright, blessed day and the dark, sacred night.

Felicity’s eyes fall half-closed with contentment. “You’re good at this. How are you good at this? No, that’s a stupid question. You’re like the king of physical coordination, and you grew up going to, you know, cotillions. Or balls or galas or what have you. Of course you’re good at this.”

"So are you."

"It’s easy when you’re telling me where to go."

He smiles. “Would you like to spin?”

"Yes, I would like to - ah!" She comes back to him giggling, and she loses her footing on the last step. Her warm, sweet-smelling weight falls against his chest, and his arms come up around her instinctively. "You may have overessmay - overestimated my skill. Or sobriety."

"Or both."

"Both," she agrees, nodding against his shoulder.

He’s about to ask if she’d like to sit down, and then she sighs happily into the fabric of his sport coat. That’s it. It’s done. He’s holding her exactly like this until the very last note of the song.

"And I think to myself…" she sings along. She slips into a hum for the last four words.

And for two more measures, it is.


	12. Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity knows how to help Oliver sleep through the night.

Oliver’s nightmares wake her about as often as they don’t.

Some nights he sleeps still and silent, then rockets up out of the black depths of his own mind and surfaces gasping. Others he rolls and kicks, muttering to himself in three different languages. Felicity hears a lot of dead people’s names on those nights.

Tonight she hears her own.

“Oliver,” she says in her sleep-roughened voice. She reaches clumsily for his arm, and she gives it a squeeze. “Oliver, wake up. It’s all right, wake up.”

The moment his eyes open, he curls an arm around her waist and drags her to his chest like a teddy bear. A naked blond teddy bear. She wriggles into a comfortable position in the curve of his body, and her eyes fall closed again. “Everybody’s ok,” she says sleepily, reaching behind her to pat his hip. “I’m ok.”

 But when he presses his face to the back of her neck, it’s wet.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Within his arms she shifts onto her back. In the morning maybe she will ask what happened to her in his dreams, how he saw her die this time. Slade’s sword, maybe. Dark water closing over her head, like it did Sara’s. His subconscious is creative, she knows.

She also knows what will help. It’s all very Marvin Gaye, but there’s no arguing with the results. “Come here.” She tugs him on top of her, parts her legs for him to settle between them.

On nights like this, Oliver slides both hands beneath her. One splays under her shoulders, the other cups the nape of her neck. He presses his scratchy whiskers to her throat, and he whispers her name into her skin.

“Shhh,” she soothes, and she runs her hands down his back, grabs his ass, pulls him close. “Come on. It’s ok.”

His hips roll against hers. She wraps her legs around him, heels resting at the base of his spine, and she nearly falls into a doze while he rocks them both slow and sure. Then he’s hard, pressing against her pubic bone with bruising force, and she wakes up enough to work his boxers down his legs. Uses her toes to slide them the rest of the way down. Bare, he tries to move against her again.

“Mmm, not wet enough yet,” she murmurs, frowning at the friction. “Not gonna work.”

Oliver’s arms slide out from beneath her, and his warm weight lifts. His mouth closes around the tip of her breast, and he pinches the other nipple, which he knows is essentially a cheat code.

“Oh.  _Oh_. Use your teeth.” She rests her hand on his bristly buzz cut while his tongue flicks over her nipple, and he must feel how slick she’s getting against his cock. Something very much like a purr escapes her, and she lets her eyes fall closed again. She could fall asleep this way – sink down sweet and easy. Maybe he could come with her.

His weight shifts, and his arms wind around her again, cradling her head and shoulders.  “Felicity.”

She opens her eyes.

He looks like a lost kid standing on a doorstep, asking to be let in from the cold. Instinctively, both her hands come up, one to cup his cheek and the other his neck, just under his ear, thumb running along his jaw line. She never, ever wants to know what happened to her in that nightmare.

“Hey, it’s ok.” She spreads her knees wider for him, and she digs her heels into his back. “Come on, it’s ok.”

He eases into her gently, and he buries his face in her neck.

“Fill me up, sweetheart,” she whispers, completely wrapped around him, wrapped up in him. The muscles of his back flex under her hand, and she imagines what they must look like by the faint moonlight filtering through the curtains. “Let me feel all of you.”

She whimpers when he bottoms out, but it’s not pain, exactly. It’s the potential for pain, if he moves the wrong way. It’s the immediacy of him, larger and stronger as he is, burying himself in her body as though it’s his only safety.

“I’m yours, you know,” she murmurs, stroking the back of his head. “I’m here, and I’m all yours. So make me feel you  _deep_.”

He moves inside her, slow and inexorable, and her heart beats double-time to his steady rhythm. Other nights, she meets him thrust for thrust and claws frantically at his back, begging for more and harder and oh Oliver  _yes_. Tonight there is no urgency, only a smooth shift in tempo. The words  _adagio to allegro_  float to mind from some long-ago piano lesson, the way old memories will on the border between sleep and waking. When he starts panting her name, she knows he’s close.

“That’s it,” she whispers. “That’s it, baby, come on. Come on. Come inside me.”

He does it quietly, just locked muscles and sharp indrawn breath. His arms tighten around her, then relax.

She pulls him down to rest on her shoulder. Pulls him into her peaceable dreams. He is hers, all hers, and she won’t let the nightmares have him.

They both sleep through the night. When she wakes up in his arms in the pink light of dawn, the first thing she sees is his smile.


	13. I'll take you to the grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver's history with ARGUS comes back to haunt him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [effie214](http://archiveofourown.org/users/effie214/pseuds/effie214) and her amazing prompt:
> 
> _so kiss me now, this whiskey on my breath  
>  feel the lives that I have taken, the little soul that I have left  
> oh, my God, I’ll take you to the grave  
> the only love I’ve ever known, the only soul I’ve ever saved_
> 
> _\- Delta Rae, "Chasing Twisters"_

It’s past the witching hour, and Oliver is staring at the living room ceiling, caught between caffeine and exhaustion. He rolls over on the sofa for the fifth time and tries to punch a throw pillow into a comfortable shape.

Three days ago, Amanda Waller made an exquisitely polite request for the Arrow’s help.

“Go to hell,” he told her.

“During your time in Hong Kong,” she said smoothly, and a video sprang to life on the glassboard behind her. “We kept careful records of your work.”

Oliver’s stomach turned. He remembered that mission –  _information retrieval_ , as Waller called it. He’d known the target’s apartment was under surveillance, but he assumed none of the video had been recorded. It hadn’t occurred to him that ARGUS would want permanent evidence of one of their proxies breaking a dozen local laws and several international treaties.

But there he is on film, retrieving information.

On the other side of the conference table, Floyd Lawton made an impressed moue at the footage. “Pliers? You are one sick puppy, Queen.”

“I imagine your wife would find this footage… interesting,” Waller said delicately.

Oliver went cold. “The answer is still no.”

Waller let the video play as he stalked out of her conference room. Oliver has heard those screams in his dreams every night since.

Three days, and Waller still hasn’t sent the video to Felicity. That’s her parting shot, he knows: sending him a little crazy waiting for the axe to fall.  
  
Footsteps creak on the stairs. Felicity flicks the dimmer switch, and the lights come up warm and low. “Oliver?”  
  
She leans in the living room doorway, rumpled and sleepy with her ponytail falling down and a pillow crease marking her cheek. She looks like she belongs in someone else’s nice, snuggly life. Oliver sits up on the sofa. “Hey.”  
  
“With you out of bed, I rolled into the middle,” Felicity says, coming around the far arm of the sofa. “Right into that gap between pillows, you know? I nearly suffocated.”  
  
Oliver scrubs a hand down his face and gives her a smile that isn’t one. “That’s what you get, bed hog.”  
  
She sits down on the coffee table in front of him, knee to knee. “You want to raid the fridge? There are strawberries.”  
  
She’s offering to keep him company, and he appreciates that, he truly does. But he scratches at the nape of his neck and says, “No, let’s just… It’s past three, isn’t it?”

Felicity nods.  
  
“Go on back up. I might take the sofa again tonight.”  
  
Her head tips, and another wisp of hair slips out of her ponytail. “Babe,” she says with a wry twist of her mouth, “you realize I have, in fact, noticed the recent weirdness.”  
  
“I realize,” he says, searching for the easiest way to tell her to go away and leave him alone. He can say “Don’t worry about it,” and he can duck his head when she moves to kiss him. He’s been known to do that, and she’s been known to let him.  
  
“Do I snore? Is that why you’re down here?”  
  
“Go to bed, Felicity.” All he has to do is say _, “_ I need some space.” But he’s gotten dependent on her talent for reading him, and he’s sitting here waiting for her to just  _get it_.  
  
“Okay,” she says, sighing on the edge of exasperation. She frees her legs from the space between his, scooting on the coffee table.  
  
“I was back there,” he blurts. “Hong Kong. I was working for Waller, and I was…” Yeah, she knows what he was doing in Hong Kong. She hasn’t  _seen_ , and hour by hour he’s dreading the moment when she does. But she has known the story in broad strokes since before they were married. “And when I woke up, you were right next to me. And I just, ah. I just couldn’t.”  
  
Felicity’s fingers spread on the thin cotton of his T-shirt, just above his heart.  
  
Maybe it’s masochism that makes him press the point: “You’re asleep on me like I’m some kind of teddy bear, and in my head I’m breaking somebody’s fingers one by one.”  
  
All Felicity says is a very mild, “Gross.” He’s woken her up with similar nightmares before. She knows the drill, or at least she thinks she does.  
  
Maybe he needs to drag her with him into the dark; maybe he’s a sick puppy and there’s something cruel living in his head. But there’s a part of him that just wants her to understand. “In the dream…”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“It was you.”  
  
Her fingers clench in the fabric of his shirt, and he wishes he could look her in the face instead of staring at her top button. “Oh,” she says quietly.  
  
“That’s it?” he demands. “Oh?”  
  
“You know pain isn’t my kink.” But she sounds pretty damn shaken.  
  
He’s a son of a bitch for telling her. “Any time now, Waller’s going to make good on a threat and send you something. Video of some of the work I did for her. When you see it, you’ll… I just thought the sofa might be better for tonight.”  
  
“Oliver,” she says thickly, like she doesn’t know what the hell she’s going to do with him. And then she’s in his lap before he can protest, straddling his legs.  
  
He holds her delicately, steadying her hips with his splayed hands. She’s a small woman, two-thirds his weight, and he can feel how easy it would be to lift her off him. He could go out to the car and find a stretch of simple road and just  _drive_ —  
  
“You are not that man anymore,” she murmurs in his ear. “And you would never hurt me.”  
  
Yeah, he’s a son of a bitch.  
  
But when she leans back on his thighs, his heavy head follows her in a slow collapse. “That place,” he tries to explain, so quietly it’s almost hoarse, “it’s not supposed to touch you.” And he rests his forehead in the hollow of her neck and shoulder.  
  
“You are not that place,” she whispers.  
  
Honestly, she’s holding him. She wraps him up tight, and her fingers drag sweet circles on his back like he was always meant for gentleness.

Let Waller send what she will.


End file.
